Tuesday, January 31, 2012

I'm jumping on the interlocking stars bandwagon. I'm typically behind the current trend, or I just ignore it completely. For example, I'm ignoring the Swoon band wagon right now, even though it is so, so tempting. Okay, I joined the flickr group, but I'm trying very, very hard to just watch from the sidelines.

Anyway, back to those cute interlocking stars. Amber made a sweet little pillow a while back, and Darci has a great tutorial too. And of course, Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson has a quilt along going right now.

So, just to warm up, I made my sister a little pouch for her birthday. I used 2" squares and pink and aqua scraps. I'm pretty new to zippers and pouches, but now that I've gotten over my fear of zippers, I have to say that they are a fun and easy present. (My sister loved it, by the way).

If you are new to pouches too, I really like Kelly's tutorial. She shows how to put those cute pieces on the end of the zipper. And even better, she shows the technique, so you can adapt it to any size of zipper or pouch. I like being taught how to fish....

On the design wall

I also started an interlocking star quilt for a friend who is expecting in February. I'm going with a pink and aqua colour scheme with a little grey thrown in to keep it from being too sweet. My friend is pretty sure she's having a girl, so hopefully she's right, or else I'm going to have to make a quick boy quilt too.

I'm basically following the quilt along from Oh Fransson, except I used 4.5" squares, and I am making it smaller (10 x 12 squares instead of 20 x 24).

Hope you had a fabulous Tuesday. I'm hoping to post about another baby quilt in progress tomorrow for WIP Wednesday.

Are you trying to avoid any popular quilting trends? Or have you jumped on the wagon?

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

I guess since I made all of those New Year's goals, I should probably keep tabs on them. I've been watching lots of my favourite bloggers chart their progress with WIP Wednesdays, so I think I'm going to join the gang.

On the Go...

Here's my Maple Leaf Rag so far. (I know many of you have seen this on flickr already, but thank you for indulging me). I just moved this project from my 'design floor' to my 'design wall' (aka a piece of batting pinned to the wall), so I'm hoping to make a bit faster progress. When it was on the floor it got ran over by crawling babies and Thomas the Tank Engine on a fairly regular basis.

I love this quilt. I love using my favourite fabrics. I love that I only have to use a little bit of my favourite fabrics so I don't feel like I'm committing. This is my for fun project.

Maple Leaf Rag in progress

I also got a little quilt destined for our local NICU basted today. I was going to quilt it too but my machine was skipping stitches and generally being a big pain. So I gave up and went back to my fun project.

On hold...

Wonky 1/4 Square {Bee Inspired} Quilt

Colour Wheel Quilt

And oh so many others that I'm not ready to admit to yet. Give me time. Please.

I'm hoping to link up to WIP Wednesdays as much as possible this year. I'll try for every week, and hope to get twice a month actually accomplished. ﻿

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I was wondering if any of you could help me out? How do I use photos from Flickr here on blogger? Right now I'm doing 2 uploads - one here on blogger, and then again on Flickr. Any suggestions?

(Edit: Thanks to all of your helpful advice, I finally figured out how to post a photo from flickr. Thank you!)﻿

Thursday, January 5, 2012

(Sorry that I'm still posting about Christmas. I'm pretty sure this is the last one. But don't hold me to it.)

I've never been much of a Christmas Dress kind of mom, but for some reason, this year I got the bug. I think it is because I now have two little girls, and the idea of matching dresses, made by mom, was more than I could pass up.

Miss Lily Christmas dress. Please ignore the bright green hanger.

My oldest daughter just started highland dancing, and is in love with all things plaid (Please note, I had nothing what-so-ever to do with this. I swear. Really!) When the new Fabricland 5 minutes from my house happened to have Christmas plaid 60% off before Christmas, I had it home before I could think to myself, "When are you going to have time to make these stinking dresses?" Somehow I found the time, and my oldest even wore hers for her school concert.

I purchased a PDF pattern here called the "Miss Lily" by The Homemade Dress. (Don't you just love downloadable patterns?) I picked it because it had sleeves, a cute bubble skirt, and it looked pretty easy.

Sisters!

Overall, I was pretty happy with the pattern. My oldest is pretty petite, so I got away with using the size 4 pattern (she's almost 5 and a half) and adding a few inches to the length. The sleeve and bodice pieces are extremely similar, and at one point I sewed a six-month sleeve to the 4-year bodice. Enter my friend the seem ripper.

Other than that, the pattern went together pretty well. The elastic neck and arms are very forgiving, so I didn't worry too much about being perfect. I also didn't match up the plaid, but I'm okay with that.

I finished off the dresses with black velvet ribbon because everything is fancier with velvet ribbon. I love having Fabricland 5 minutes from my house (it only opened this fall). I may not like most of their fabric, but they have a great selection of ribbon and notions.

I also made my son a tie with the same fabric. He wore it under duress to mass on Christmas Eve, but I didn't get a photo of the three kids together because sweet Miss S was already asleep and stayed home with Grandma. We still have our tree up (I'm waiting till Epiphany to take it down), so I'm still holding out for a group shot. The tie was quick and easy to make. I used this pattern/tutorial because it has a velcro closure. This is a necesity if you are putting the tie on by force. How is it that boys come hard-wired to hate dressing up? If you are looking for a good round-up of tie and bow tie tutorials, check out Erin's post.

A Christmas Tie.

I was pretty proud to have my kids wear Mama Made clothes for Christmas. Next year, I may go for more coordinated than matching, but we'll see.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

I haven't quite finished showing off all of my homemade Christmas creations, but after reading Felicity's fabulous recap of 2011, I thought I'd better take stock of 2011 myself and make some new goals for 2012. I'll wrap up Christmas sometime this week, so that I can start the new year off fresh.

2011 in Pictures.

I didn't get quite as many quilty finishes done this year as I would have liked, but I do have a creative 5 year old, a mischievous 3.5 year old and a sweet little 8 month old to show for myself instead.

Kids!

This time last year, I declared 2011 the year of finishing UFO's. Well, I started strong, but I think the only UFO's I actually finished were in January. I also realize now that I didn't write very good goals last year. I went through enough years of university to know that goals should be specific, attainable and measurable. Oops. So this year, I'm going to try to write better goals!

Make a Maple Leaf Rag Quilt by Sarah Fielke. I love this quilt! I started crazy piecing the kites this fall and I can't wait to start putting blocks on the design wall.

Crazy Pieced Kites for my Maple Leaf Rag Quilt

Finish my daughter's Oliver + S Messenger Bag. Yup. Still waiting to get the perfect hardware for this one.

Finish my Colour Wheel Quilt. This one is a project. I pieced together the top, made a backing, got ready to baste it, then realized that it does. not. lay. flat. Not even close. This one needs to be picked apart. And I'm afraid of what I need to do to put it together again.

Make at least two quilts for charity. I've got one quilt top even made. Just need to finish it!

Use up what I have instead of buying and hoarding fabric. Okay, this isn't measurable and it probably isn't very attainable, but I am going to work on it. Really.

Write a tutorial for this blog. I'm by no means a designer, but I'd like to challenge myself to a simple tutorial.